Penny & Sparrow have spent over a decade crafting music that feels both intimate and expansive, blending poetic storytelling with rich harmonies and evolving sonic textures. Made up of Andy Baxter and Kyle Jahnke, the duo’s work balances deeply personal narratives with abstract, literary influences, resulting in songs that resonate long after they end. Their latest album, Lefty, recorded in the quiet solitude of a garden shed, pushes their sound further, seamlessly binding acoustic warmth with electronic experimentation.
In this conversation, they reflect on their creative process, the evolution of their harmonies and sound, and the artistic philosophy that has guided their journey.
Listen to Lefty now, while reading this interview:
How do you balance personal storytelling with more fictional or abstract elements in your music?
We dabble in autobiography, short stories, poems, and a ton of other vehicles when it comes to lyrics. There really isn’t an attempt at balancing, honestly it feels like we get to ask the same question with every new melody, which is: what does this song wanna be?
Your harmonies are a signature part of Penny & Sparrow’s sound. How do you approach vocal arrangements, and do you have any specific inspirations for the way you layer your voices?
We typically use both harmonies and lyrics as a chance to self express, which to us means taking any inspiration we can find and running with it. We love variety in our harmonies and vocal arrangements, so that means anything really goes. As long as the song makes us feel something, we’ll go with that direction. Sometimes that means a lush arrangement full of stacked vocals, sometimes it means a dry one-take performance.
You’ve cited influences ranging from Simon & Garfunkel to Stephen Sondheim. How do these different inspirations find their way into your music, particularly on Lefty?
I feel like we can’t help but bring some of the energy of the artists we love into the songs we make, and we listen and are inspired by a very large spectrum of music. We don’t want to be referential, but find small things that these artists do and ways they make us feel, and try to capture that for ourselves and in our own way. I think finding your own musical voice sometimes means steering clear from the choices others have made so that you can find what is uniquely yours. Influences are difficult to avoid and sometimes a pitfall to pure self expression. In my opinion the difficult part is spotting the times when you’ve written something that feels unquestionably yours.
You recorded Lefty in a friend’s garden shed—how did that intimate setting shape the album’s mood and recording process?
Recording in the shed was special because it gave us the time to experiment. We love our time in studios and they offer their own color to albums, but the purity that can come from just working in a space with less time limitations really lets you get to the core of what you want to accomplish. Some songs are puzzles that you have to get across the finish line, and sometimes that takes more time than you expect. There’s a bit of a rush against the clock during studio sessions, and working in the shed removed that creative barrier for us and let us be more patient with each version of each song.
Were there any unexpected challenges or happy accidents during the recording of Lefty that helped shape the final sound?
I think writing a double album in general creates a slew of unexpected challenges. One of our main things when we set out to make this album was to keep the listener on their toes – too often when listening to double albums I found myself getting fatigued by the same sounds and production. A double album for us was an amazing excuse to try to get out of our comfort zones and experiment with different sounds and instrumentation, but that often led us down some pretty silly paths musically (those songs will stay in the hard drive). But you can’t know until you try! I feel like the happy accident was that when we smashed all the different sounds together and put them in the order we liked, the through-line was that we wrote them all (of course with the help of our friend and co-producer Jonathan Oliphant) and I think the melodies and lyricism let them all work together even though it definitely has sounds from all over the map.
The album moves seamlessly between acoustic and electronic elements. What was it like experimenting with these different textures in the studio?
It was amazing and sometimes hilarious. Its a fun thing to be immediately inspired by sounds and textures you aren’t used to using, and getting to find your fingerprints within them. When the goal is to unapologetically express, make, and share, the creative process becomes quite a joy. The other side of that coin is that sometimes what you make sounds insane and vulnerable at the same time and you just have to laugh and keep moving forward.
Many of your songs feel deeply cinematic and narrative-driven. Do you ever draw inspiration from books, films, or specific stories when writing lyrics?
Absolutely…we’re both avid eaters of story and we both consider that to be a lovely part of the job. We’re all over the map in our tastes and that makes every album feel like an art exhibit that we get to curate based upon our own libraries.
The album features everything from love letters to horror-inspired storytelling. How do you decide which emotional or thematic direction a song will take?
Even though each song has a different recipe and cook time, we do front end work with melody to see what mood/color scheme/themes might be…and that usually infers the lyrical content.
Are there any lyrics on Lefty that you’re especially proud of or that hold a particularly deep meaning for you?
Currently I’m still obsessed with Sea Foam & My lover was a great man…the latter is fan fiction for a book we both loved called “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara. Fan fiction is such a fun way to explore songwriting, and the former has a sexy lyric I love: “You’ve been into cartography, you sketch the view from on top of me”
When bringing in collaborators, do you write with them in mind, or does the creative process naturally lead to guest features?
Both I reckon; with Annika I wrote words for her voice and it was a blast hearing her absolutely crush it. With Tobe and David it was different, their instruments were perfect for the tunes we invited them on and we more or less told them both to just “do what felt right” and boy did they, it was absolute dynamite performances from both of those fellas.
You’ve performed in iconic venues across the U.S. and internationally. Is there a particular performance or city that holds a special place in your hearts?
Austin, TX and Florence, AL will always be special because they’re both hometowns for us. Playing those places (in ANY capacity) is magic every damn time.
Looking back at your journey as Penny & Sparrow, how do you think you’ve grown as artists since your early days of covering songs in college?
I don’t think I have the words yet to fully detail what that growth has been like. Trying to would feel like going into your childhood home and making sense of the height markings that were made on a door post from when we were kids. I don’t remember getting taller, I just know we are now. The old clothes don’t fit but we still kept some of our favorite things from back then. Some of them we burned, some of them we shadowboxed and put up gallery lighting to showcase. The best way to answer that would probably be to invite you to listen to every album in order, what you’ll see is two kids growing up and not slowing down.
If you could give your younger selves one piece of advice about making music and navigating the industry, what would it be?
We gave ourselves advice at the beginning and we told each other: “Be unafraid in your making. Do EXACTLY what you want. Folks will either dig it or not, but you can be sure that YOU dig what you make, and if YOU dig what you make, you’ll sleep with a smile on your face.”
What do you hope listeners take away from Lefty—whether emotionally, musically, or thematically?
I want what I’ve wanted for every album leading up to this one: I hope it makes life better for you and for all those you love.
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